New York City Emergency Departments Renovate, Expand To Attract Paying Patients
Many New York City hospitals are expanding their emergency departments and offering targeted services as part of an effort to increase revenue and meet the demands of large numbers of uninsured patients seeking treatment, the New York Times reports. Hospitals also are working to reorganize their EDs, "with the intention of turning the mayhem into, at a minimum, a more organized kind of chaos," according to the Times. Efforts include adding private rooms; retaining art therapists to entertain children in the waiting room; assigning "navigators" to assist uninsured patients in completing paperwork; and instituting "fast-track systems," which divide EDs into areas for the less-seriously and more-seriously injured, the Times reports.
Many hospitals are "aggressively marketing the virtues of their remodeled and expanded" EDs because the departments "remain vital points of entry for paying patients whose eventual admission accounts for needed revenue," according to the Times. The efforts come as New York City EDs work to deal with rising numbers of uninsured patients; rapid population growth; a shortage of primary care physicians; and President Bush's proposed cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. Many New York hospitals also are trying to deal with an influx of patients who normally would have sought care at hospitals that were closed, merged with other hospitals or will close, as recommended by a state commission in 2006 (Kershaw, New York Times, 2/12).
